La Grande Chartreuse

To the Religious of La Grande Chartreuse

(by Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

Illustrious dwellers of these holy abodes,
Where neither tears nor laments ever draw near!
How your chaste pleasures surpass the sweetness
Of the juice whose poison intoxicates so many hearts!
How many mortals would melt in your fearsome wilderness,
If they knew how happy those like you truly are!
My heart seems prey to the most vivid sorrows,
While you forever swim in the purest joy.
Tranquil in the certainty of your eternity,
You see your blessedness already beginning;
While my soul, torn by a thousand remorse,
Fears one day being delivered to flames and demons.
You flee the great world, and it flees you in turn;
But the more I distance myself from it, the more it pursues me.
Gold, honor, pleasure, all conspire to ensnare me:
I neither know, nor wish, nor can defend myself against them.
I love what harms me, I hate what is good for me,
Ceaselessly I fight against grace and reason.
Alas! Why did I not see the world through your eyes,
Or why did I not sooner draw near to these places!
You have banished from them fraud and imposture,
Grace alone reigns here, and simple nature.
There, each one consulting reason and Faith,
Flees evil, does good, and lives according to the Law.
O ways, O holy ways! how rare a virtue
Deserves the happiness that Heaven prepares for you!
Occupied with God alone before his altars,
You live unknown to the rest of mortals.
Your vanquished enemy, ashamed of his defeat,
No longer comes to trouble this sweet retreat.
Here one sees no soft idleness
Nurturing pleasure in the arms of sleep,
Nor the greedy fury for some fragile good
Driving every undertaking and making all things easy.
All is changed for you; worldly goods hold no allure,
Glory and pleasures are as though they never were;
Hunger, cold, heat, silence, and tears,
Vigils and labors hold for you only charm.
What men, just Heaven! who have nothing human left!
Have they become as bronze or brass?
Old firs, who witness innocence reborn,
That the world once knew at its very beginning,
Hide me so completely beneath your thick foliage
That my wandering guide may never find me;
That I myself, lost along your hidden paths,
May never find my way back out;
Yes, I consecrate to God the rest of my days,
May he guide their happy or sorrowful course as he sees fit;
Most blessed if I can, by living as you do,
Obtain his favor and calm his wrath.